The Secret Life of Words

Quietly powerful. As people on the periphery provide some interesting quirks and questions, the stories of the two main characters unfold slowly. Details that you learn about them & guess about them pull you into their stories and make you hope fervently that each finds a way to recover and rebuild. I found it an interesting exploration of the ways that wounded people tend to be drawn to each other.

Whispering words of substantial meaning - As Jane Campion, Susanne Bier, Lynne Ramsay and Sally Potter, Spanish director Isabel Coixet who caught my attention with "My Life Without Me" (2003) has a subtle, lyrical and ravishingly beautiful way of depicting human relations and emotions, which shines through in this heartfelt and universally appealing story about Hanna, a lonely factory worker in Northern Ireland who after being instructed to take a holiday by her boss returns to her lonely life at the coast where she realizes that a holiday is the last thing she wants and ends up taking a job as a nurse at an oil rig. Isabel Coixets fifth feature film is mostly set on a distant oil rig focusing on Hanna's evolving relationship with her patient Josef and her meeting with seven men who share her need for solitude and privacy. The role of Hanna is portrayed by Sarah Polley, an actress with a great gift for interpreting internal and low-keyed characters with great conviction, "The Sweet Herafter" (1997) being one of them, and here she practically conveys the soul of the film through her intuitive and quiet though expressive performance, which transcends in the scene where she confides to her patient, gracefully played by Tim Robbins. "The Secret Life of Words" is well-paced character study with fragments of poetry that has lively visuals, mood-setting music, many colorful characters and is observantly written and gently filmed by Isabel Coixet. It is a memorable movie experience which through it's depiction of people who turn to their loneliness in order to regain their security succeeds to affirm new perspectives on life.